Ac­tion plan pro­duced to build a fu­ture for city’s live mu­sic scene

The first mu­sic strat­egy for Dundee has been pub­lished, fol­low­ing a con­sul­ta­tion pe­riod led by the coun­cil and other lead­ing cul­tural stake­hold­ers.

Ac­tive mem­bers of the city’s mu­sic pro­duc­ing com­mu­nity in­clud­ing artists, venue own­ers, pro­mot­ers and sound tech­ni­cians were in­vited to share their views and con­trib­ute to the re­port, which was led by Leisure and Cul­ture Dundee.

A sim­i­lar re­port was com­piled a decade ago, which iden­ti­fied the need for in­vest­ment in in­fra­struc­ture and fa­cil­i­ties of small to mid-sized venues in town, some­thing in­ter­ested par­ties “lamented” was still a ne­ces­sity now.

The re­sponse to the sur­vey, which was con­ducted through­out 2016, noted that those who reg­u­larly vis­ited mu­sic venues in Dundee felt let down by the way the ma­jor­ity of con­certs and shows were mar­keted.

Al­most 700 re­sponses were re­ceived, with 71% of those who com­pleted the sur­vey iden­ti­fy­ing them­selves as a mu­sic maker.

The strat­egy re­port states: “Au­di­ences de­scribe live mu­sic in Dundee as dif­fi­cult to ac­cess in­for­ma­tion about, with com­ments par­tic­u­larly fo­cused on poor mar­ket­ing and the need to visit many dif­fer­ent web­sites to find the in­for­ma­tion they are look­ing for.”

A num­ber of com­mit­ments have been made, per­tain­ing to three is­sues iden­ti­fied in the re­port.

The ac­tion plan states that Leisure and Cul­ture – along­side prin­ci­pal part­ners Dundee City Coun­cil, Place Part­ner­ship One City Many Dis­cov­er­ies and Make That A Take and Just Bee Pro­duc­tions – will work to­gether to grow op­por­tu­ni­ties for mu­si­cians, de­velop au­di­ences and im­prove pro­mo­tion.

Fur­ther in­vest­ment for the Dundee Mu­sic Award will be an­nounced in the fu­ture, to give pro­fes­sional mu­si­cians op­por­tu­ni­ties to de­velop and prac­tice.

The city’s “What’s On” list­ing on the coun­cil and Leisure and Cul­ture web­site will be ex­panded to al­low for more pro­mo­tion of smaller con­certs, and con­sid­er­a­tions will be given to de­vel­op­ing and in­vest­ing in a city-wide pro­mo­tional cam­paign which will ad­ver­tise the mu­sic scene to a big­ger au­di­ence.

The strat­egy will also strive to make res­i­dents “fall in love” with live mu­sic again and in­crease the num­ber of larger tour­ing bands vis­it­ing the city by de­vel­op­ing a se­ries of in­cen­tives to at­tract them to Dundee.

Pic­ture: Steve MacDougall.

The View’s front­man, Kyle Fal­coner, per­forms as part of Record Store Day pro­mo­tion.